Kuntar: Israel would have paid higher price for living soldiers

Freed terrorist to continue struggle against Israel; Hezbollah says it will make more kidnap attempts.

Freed Lebanese terrorist Samir Kuntar said on Saturday that Israel would have paid a much higher price for the return of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser had one of them been alive after their capture.

Kuntar made his comments to Radio A-Shams, which broadcasts from Nazareth. He added that he will continue to work with Hezbollah in its struggle against Israel.

These statements come after a recent string of interviews, in which Kuntar has made combative remarks against Israel. In his first interview with Hezbollah's TV station Al-Manar, Kuntar urged the entire Arab world to continue to fight for Palestine's freedom, and also called on Lebanon to fight for Israel's withdrawal from the Shaba Farms.

Kuntar had been the longest-held Lebanese prisoner in Israel until his release on Wednesday. He was convicted of murdering three Israelis in a 1979 terror attack in Nahariya.

Kuntar and four Hezbollah guerrillas were freed in exchange for the bodies of IDF reservists Regev and Goldwasser, captured by Hezbollah in July 2006 in a cross-border raid that sparked the Second Lebanon War.

The exchange was mediated over the course of 18 months by a United Nations-appointed German official.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah will make more attempts to kidnap IDF soldiers, according to statements made earlier Saturday by the deputy head of the Lebanese Shi'ite militia, Sheikh Naim Kassam, Army Radio reported.

According to the report, Kassam made the statement during an interview with a Qatari newspaper, in which he said that Hezbollah is in a state of war with Israel, which "continues to infiltrate the skies of Lebanon and poses a serious threat."

Kassam added that Hezbollah is still obligated to revenge the killing of former senior Hezbollah terrorist Imad Mugniyah, who perished in a car bombing in Damascus in February.

Israel and Hezbollah completed a prisoner swap deal on Wednesday in which Hezbollah returned the bodies of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser. In return Israel handed over terrorist Samir Kuntar and four Hezbollah militants, as well as 197 bodies.